When it comes to capturing the public imagination, the FA Cup takes some beating. Year after year, this domestic knock-out offers something that the more glamorous, financially lucrative European competitions just can’t deliver. Magic.

MAGIC.

The Football Association Cup has a long and illustrious history, predating the invention of football, associations and cups. The first known mention of the FA Cup is found within the biblical tale of David and Goliath, Old Testament, 1 Samuel 17:
The men of Judah and Israel did congratulate David on his victory over Goliath. For four days and four continuous nights, things got messy.
Deep within their hearts, the chosen people knew David’s use of slingshot to slay Goliath to be sly, though when celebrating did mention it not to one another. When pressed by the Philistines, the men of Israel did claim to have not seen the use of any slingshot. And even if they did see it, ‘swings and roundabouts.’

Though sinful and covetous, various men grumbled they should have placed money on David defeating the mighty Goliath as they had a premonition that such a thing would come to pass. None did articulate the feeling before the event thus it was hard to verify and was a great leap of faith that the wives of these men refused to make.

Following the decapitation of Goliath, the ugly brute’s blood was drained and smelted with iron to form a large, silver bowl– what would later become that beacon of domestic football we know and love today. You could say that the FA Cup has always had a tradition of giant killing as Goliath was abnormally large and David killed him.

For many years, the bowl was much contested over, causing one biblical war after another. When it came to doing battle for the shiny bowl, form went out the window.

There was an entire century when the bowl was unaccounted for. Kings of great reputation mounted campaigns to find the bowl, all of which were in vain. The natural order was restored in 10 B.C. however when the bowl was discovered nestled under the warm succour of a three-year-old Siberian husky. A real underdog story.

Affectionately known as Minty, that dog was pulled apart limb by limb by hoards of superstitious soldiers who took her to be the devil incarnate. Incidentally, John ‘Motty’ Motson’s coat is made from the caramelised fur of that brutalised dog. As the old saying goes: you couldn’t fictionalise that!

Quite a history then. Maybe that’s why it means so much to the players. And maybe that’s why it means so much to us fans that it means so much to the players. And maybe that’s why it means so much to the pundits that us fans know just how much it means to the players because it means so much to us that it means so much to them.

So much so, if a team wins a game but they didn’t mean it, supporters of said team riot until the opposition is allowed to progress to the next round. If neither team means to win, the game goes to existential penalties. This of course involves the long walk to the penalty spot where players from both teams take it in turns to shout out a hidden, deep-rooted trauma that the crowd proceeds to mercilessly mock. Who can forget when Alan Shearer bleated out his fear of babies on public transport?? Not that he was scared for them, but that he was scared of them. Oh, Alan. And for fans of a certain age (27) the name Noberto Solano is synonymous with a phobia of kitchen utensils. Never approach Nobby with a peeler, especially in a dark alley! Fair enough, that one.

It’s ironic that the fans care so much about their team’s effort levels in the FA Cup given that a team does not choose to win the FA Cup. Rather, the FA Cup chooses the team it wants to win. That’s why any cobbled together crew can end up winning the biggest prize in football, regardless of ability, personality or hairstyle. The Crazy Gang, The Horse Throwers, Shit Stirrers United. All winners. All thoroughly bad people. So why not enter your random gang into the competition next year? Anyone can win it.

Loss of innocence is often depicted as a sudden transformation, a crossing of a Rubicon that can’t be reversed. In Swiss-French animated film My Life as a Courgette it is instead portrayed as a delicate peeling away of childhood’s illusions. From the vantage point of adulthood, it is a painful yet frequently delightful journey to watch.

This stop-motion film opens in the attic of 9-year-old Icare, better known as Courgette (the French film title is Ma Vie de Courgette). Courgette’s face is coloured with the palette of a washed out clown: a red French fry nose, sheet-white skin, large eyes circled in a blue hue with azure hair to match. His cartoon appearance complements the themes of the film; Courgette retains the playfulness of youth but life has stubbed out the possibility of carefree abandon. He gathers beer cans tossed by his alcoholic mother and assembles wobbly towers in the attic.

When his single mother suddenly dies, newly orphaned Courgette is interviewed by a kindly police officer, Raymond. In this scene, the emotional depth of the film becomes clear. Courgette tacitly acknowledges his mother’s neglectful treatment of him while offering “the fun times” and her “really good mash potatoes” as counterbalance; a resentment-free outlook near incompatible with adulthood. Courgette then asks to be returned to his mother. He is taken to an orphanage.

For a film centred on an orphan, My Life as a Courgette is remarkably cliché free. Director Claude Barras avoids depicting parentless children in either an overtly maudlin or hyper-romantic fashion. His dexterous storytelling captures the simultaneously liberating and traumatic freefall of losing all bonds and ties, in a way that calls to mind Wes Anderson’s irreverent yet sensitive Moonrise Kingdom.

The orphanage is a large, bright manor in the country, much more appealing than Courgette’s ill-kept house. Nevertheless, to Courgette, it is an alien and scary place. The animators subtly render his downheartedness so that the friendly surroundings of the classrooms and communal bedrooms seem to exacerbate his longing for home. Its comforts are a source of woe.

An adaptation of a Gilles Paris novel, this filmis defined by its impressive characterisation. Archetypes at the orphanage—the puritanical headmistress, the bully—expand as the story progresses to include angles of personality initially invisible. There are no veering epiphanies, just the deft drip-drip of Courgette’s discoveries. As he gets to know his fellow orphans, so does the audience. The bully becomes Simon: a plucky, considerate young boy who happens to be the son of two drug addicts.

The children share a common fate, though each has lived a different story. The tragic tales of their past furnish the audience’s understanding of the children’s actions, for instance, Simon’s horrible upbringing is manifest in his refusing to wash. The stories also act as the cornerstones of the children’s individual identities, and choosing when and with whom to share their stories is of great importance. What happened before the orphanage is both an ever-present burden and a rarely shared intimacy. Perhaps this is loss of innocence: the acquisition of pain that can never truly be shed.

Everything changes at the orphanage with the arrival of Camille, a forthright, Kafka-reading ten-year-old. The whole clan of kids is smitten with her, none more so than Courgette. His existential sighs are replaced by the exhales of exaltation. He is eyes-to-the-sky-in-love. However, even amid the dizzying distraction of Camille, the orphans do not forget themselves. In one striking scene, the group stare at a doting mother and child as if they happened upon a pair of wild animals: strange, alluring, ultimately unknowable.

The heart bursting double-act of Courgette and Camille takes the centre stage of the film, and the inevitable return of Camille’s wicked aunt provides stakes. Camille’s aunt is the only character—adult or child—given short shrift in terms of personality. She’s a Punch and Judy marionette villain in a world of carefully crafted people. And with no other character in My Life as a Courgette do you doubt the puppets are people.

This anthropomorphic quality can be attributed to two factors in the film’s production. Firstly, a “real-life” version of this film was shot over six weeks, and the facial expressions captured informed the animators’ work over the next three years. Second, the animators chose to use puppets with large faces so as to retain greater control over emotional expression. Each smile, frown and grimace is deliberate and chosen.

Throughout the film objects are invested with meaning. All the children are object poor, and they cherish the items they do possess, as evident when Courgette nearly breaks Simon’s arm to get his kite back. What the children lack is also of great significance. For example, Simon dreams of receiving a letter from his absent parents. Here, the film taps into a universal truth: we live in a material world and what we have and don’t have can have an enormous effect on the lives we lead, especially as children when we make sense of the world primarily through physical objects.

Yet My Life as a Courgette touches on an even deeper point: that material objects are malleable and that the meanings projected upon objects evolve, too. For Courgette, a single beer can is a building block, then a memorial, and later bent into a boat as a gift for Camille. This reshaping of materials to serve meaning is miraculously human. And the film itself is an example of this heartening endeavour: take some clay, metal, foam, and resin, add years of painstaking labour, throw in some expert storytelling and, voila, a masterpiece teeming with the joy and sadness of being alive.

Ever since Eve pointed at a divine red delicious and Adam snaffled the apple for himself, relations have been frosty between men and women. Innumerable sleepless nights have been given over to wondering, “Women: what do they want and how can we give it to them?” Of all the things to have been spawned from a single rib, women are surely the hardest to please.

Turns out, different women want different things. This may seem obvious now, but just like the discovery of gravity by Isaac Newton and electricity by Benjamin Franklin, acquiring groundbreaking knowledge about the fairer sex was a process as painful as childbirth (probably).

The 2000 release of Mel Gibson rom-com What Women Want marked the dawn of a new era in inter-gender relations. Forget Simone De Beauvoir, throw out your Mary Wollstonecraft. The entertainingly frothy What Women Want is the foundation of female liberation in the 21st century, and, naturally, it’s all thanks to a man who’s granted the gift of hearing women’s thoughts.

The film opens with an ex-wife gushing over her former spouse as the zenith of masculinity. According to the misty-eyed divorcee, he’s “a man’s man”, which sounds like a euphemism akin to “batting for the other team,” but it’s not. Whoever this guy is, he’s the opposite of gay. He’s straight and he likes his women like he likes his coffee: by the bag-full, instant, etcetera, etcetera.

Nick Marshall is the man, myth and legend. His secretary (Sarah Paulson) warns an incoming colleague that Marshall is the “least politically correct guy.” Enter Mel Gibson as Marshall, an Ad Man in Chicago whose recurring creative motif is to depict a bikinied lady holding whichever product his company is trying to sell. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

As Marshall winks at hotties and shuns the notties, his ex-wife fills in the blank of his past. Marshall’s mother was a showgirl in Vegas, and as a result he grew up in the dressing rooms abundant with glamorous beauties, all of whom became Marshall’s bosom buddies. This charmingly presented back-story is supposed to account for Marshall’s behavior, though not all chauvinists were raised in showgirls’ dressing rooms: some merely walk through them without permission in later life.

Unlike 50s pop songs about young girls developing into women and aging well, What Women Wants has aged well, and is rather perky for a rom-com that’s 17-years-old. This is because Marshall’s dinosaur character is sadly not extinct, and he makes for a compelling anti-hero at the start of the film. He’s a rich bad-dad bachelor, whose frequent wiggling of sunglasses, deep voice, and over-the-top facial expressions count as charisma. Marshall is a man who believes his own myth, and alas, his utter self- conviction means that others buy into it too, men and women alike. Annoying it may be, but it’s also believable.

After the pride comes the fall. Dressed in all black like a strutting sexist raven, Marshall crows to everyone at the office about his upcoming promotion. But when he meets with Dan Wanamaker (Alan Alda), the company CEO, Marshall learns that the Creative Director role he covets has been given to somebody else, and to add insult to injury, she’s only a woman: Darcy McGuire (Helen Hunt).

Things take a humorous turn when Marshall goes home to lick his wounds and gets absolutely blotto. Glugging merlot, he declares “There’s too much oestrogen on TV these days. The cure is Frank.” Frank isn’t the street name for testosterone, it’s what Marshall calls kindred spirit Frank Sinatra. Ol’ Blue Eyes fills the apartment, and Marshall proceeds to give a genuinely impressive drunken dance routine for the benefit of nobody but his shadow.

The big band music of Sinatra and his peers soundtracks the entirety of What Women Want. Not only are the songs catchy and light, but they also reveal the kind of intoxicating nostalgia that Marshall holds as a credo; a longing for the days gone-by when women were broads, and everything was in black-and-white (a mindset to which Mel Gibson might possibly relate). Having been tasked by McGuire to develop an advertising campaign for women, Marshall grapples with both modernity and various products made for women, including stockings, nail varnish, bath beads, and a wonderbra. He samples them all at once in a drunken rite of passage.

In what is essentially an inverse of the glass ceiling phenomenon, Marshall slips on the female-friendly bath beads scattered on the floor, dragging the hairdryer into the bath, having just uttered, moments before, the magic words: “What Do Women Want?” Perhaps his sudden demise, one might venture.

When he wakes up frazzled the next day, somehow still alive, Marshall has acquired an incredible ability/curse: he can hear the inner-most thoughts of women, and also, French poodles (gentle xenophobia or sexism—you decide!)

The viewer hears what only Marshall can hear, and delights in his maddening isolation. Director Nancy Meyers, whose credits include Something’s Got To Give and, most recently, The Intern, does a good job of making sure the various streams of consciousness don’t overwhelm each scene. The script is funny for the most part, and the majority of the film’s best lines come from the inner-thoughts of random women wandering past Marshall, biting their tongue but articulating their scorn. It’s effective and entertaining, owing something of its flavour to the subtitled scenes of Annie Hall.

Marshall is taken aback by how many women think he’s a low-life chauvinist, bringing to mind a line from The Office: “How can I hate women, my Mum was one?” For the first time in his life he is forced to pay attention to his female colleagues’ situations. Among the plethora of problems is his secretary’s feeling undervalued (she long-distance calls her Israeli boyfriend from the office as revenge) and a mousey administrative assistant who internally toys with the idea of suicide.

Hearing about the woes of women is too much for Marshall and he seeks to re-electrocute himself back to normality. When this doesn’t work he pays a visit to his old marriage counsellor, played by Bette Midler. Initially sceptical, she enthuses over his new ability: “Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars and you speak Venusian,”basically making him a high-level Scientologist without paying full fees. The counsellor continues: “Freud went to his grave asking himself ‘What do women want?'” This is something of poetic licence on the part of Josh Goldsmith’s script; Freud’s last question was more likely, “Where can I score some coke?” Still, it’s an amusing shrink scene.

Enlightened to the scope of his powers, Marshall becomes a dirty thought perve, spying on all the ladies’ thoughts to his own advantage. He manipulates his estranged daughter into liking him, women into sleeping with him, and his boss into admiring his ideas; in fact, he swipes McGuire’s ideas from the cusp of her synapses, abusing her understandable hesitancy in the male-dominated advertising industry.

What Women Wants certainly has its blind spots. There is one person of colour with a speaking line, and she’s hyper-sexualised, so the film’s more about what white women supposedly want, and middle class ones at that. Incredibly, in this regard, What Women Want makes Mad Men look like an example of positive discrimination in action.

Then again, there are a few PC delights buried within; not least Mel Gibson saying “I’m gay,” like a real man’s man, and another quick moment where he thanks his secretary’s Jewish boyfriend for the gift of a Yarmulke. Gibson treats aside, the film peddles a blatant untruth about women that shouldn’t be tolerated in the 21st century; whenever a woman kisses Marshall, the woman kicks up one leg like a horse that’s just been fed a sugar cube. When will the world be free of this cinematic cliché?

The overall message of What Women Want is in some ways a little depressing. After all, it takes an extraordinary, fictional power in order for one idiot man to overcome his sexism and gain some empathy. In this way, there’s a Christmas Carol element to What Women Want, though instead of cooking a big turkey for the women of the world, Marshall settles on dolling out some respect instead. The film heads towards an ending that is both progressive yet dissatisfying, perhaps an appropriate parallel with the achievements of the feminist movement. Is this as good as it gets? Let’s hope not.

If you’re not drunk, you’re not ready for Slaters. Come with mates. The bigger the group, the better. Ideally, you’ll all be between the ages of sixteen and twenty, freshly tipsy from a few hours of pre-drinking. The night doesn’t begin at Slaters, but it can be made there.

Slaters is a small bar in Liverpool. Of Slater Street, without the apostrophe. It’s got a vague claim of Irish heritage but no pride in the claim. It’s situated in the thick of it, a stone’s throw away from the Seel Street nightclubs: Heebie Jeebies, Peacocks and La’Gos. This measurement of distance is not an approximation, it’s been empirically verified by the punters who frequent Slaters.

To enter Slaters sober is to see things you should never see. You see these things when you’re drunk too, but inebriation does wonders for lowering the standards of your own humanity. As Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys once sang, “you couldn’t have done that on a Sunday.”

The correct mode of entrance is the stumble. Up three or four steps, depending on how good your counting is. Flash the I.D. to the heavies on the door, a nervy moment if you’re borrowing a faded out passport with someone else’s face on it. Everyone has their own method, but I personally liked to memorise not only the name and birth date on the passport but the corresponding star sign. Sometimes I even made up a little titbit about the middle name.

The bouncer doesn’t care. He’s too busy perving on girls from the vantage of the top step. Girls in tiny dresses wearing skyscraper stilettos, lathered in makeup and St. Tropez fake tan. Most have got the thick Scouse brow, and their fake eyelashes are so extensive that they could qualify as prosthetic limbs. Cleopatra can’t touch a Scouse girl on a night out.

You step through the door. You’re in. When you’re not yet 18, getting into a bar using someone else’s I.D. is the sweetest victory life can offer. When you’re over 18, you’d do anything to recapture the feeling, the swell of energy, immediately pushed down lest you give yourself away. Play. It. Cool.

After the adrenaline of getting in, your senses adjust. Heat. Too much of it. Bodies packed around you. Strange smells that can’t be identified. TV screens with the horse racing on. Why? You’re in no state to find out. Apparently some people don’t treat Slaters as their River Styx – the jumping point to a night on the tiles – but as their final destination. Such people lost their way long ago.

You head towards the bar in the next room. Go left and you have to push past a wall of people. Go right and you have to take an interior bridge adjacent to the toilets. You go right and catch sight of the door-deprived bathroom. The so-called urinal is a trough filled with assorted vomit.

Instead of taking this as a warning, a metaphorical sign-post labelled “Go No Further”, for some reason you’ve now got an urgency to go deep into the dark woods of depravity, to stay the night at the rickety mansion in the middle of nowhere of your soul. Onwards Christian soldier: here we fucking go.

The bar is in sight and the jukebox rings out. Thin Lizzy or The Strokes. As you mill past bodies towards your destination, your shoulders get wet. We’re in the splash zone, and drinks are flying. You spot your mates eking their way forward to the bar and urge them on with a nod. You spot the dickhead from school. Depending on your drunken disposition, he’s either the worst person in the world or he’s actually, not a bad lad, really, if you think about it.

You get the nod to order. Finally, the reason we’re all here: the quadvod. That’s four shots of vodka for four English pounds, plus a mixer of your choosing. Four shots. Four pounds. Mixer. You get it, right? They don’t have a “College of Knowledge” sign on the wall for nothing. The source of all knowledge sloshes before you.

Slaters was not built for these times, or indeed, any times. Previously served in one receptacle, the quadvod is now split between two smaller glasses and accompanied by a larger glass, which is empty. It is illegal for the barstaff to serve the quadvod as was originally intended. If you want to spend the night at the rickety, haunted mansion that’s up to you, they’re merely handing you the keys to your own downfall.

And there will be a downfall, be sure of that. Come tomorrow morning, the hangover will be awe-inspiring. A quadvod is essentially a haemorrhage in a glass. “Smooth, fresh, delicious.” All vodka adverts on TV should end with the narrator being forced to down three shots before repeating the promises of taste quality to the nation. “Smooth, fresh, delicious.” But tomorrow morning is an abstract concept, and you sip away at the concoction disguised slightly by a Red Bull mixer.

You trot down the winding metal staircase to the basement. The floor is sticky and the ceiling is low and all your friends are there. You huddle together and swap stories and make jokes and drink drinks. Smiles abound as the headiness kicks in. Someone starts to sway to a tune, another is already slumped on a chair with sleepy eye-lids flittering. You know it won’t be long until you all head out to Heebie Jeebies to dance to some Motown classics.

Before you leave you spot a photo being taken in the corner of the basement. Three girls your age lined up in identical pose for a photo. They face the camera from the side, their elbow on their hip, as if caught half way through the ‘I’m a little tea-pot’ song. They’ve got the handle but they don’t have a spout; it’s essentially a mug shot. And as you look at them, and you drink some more, and you turn to your friends, and you catch the end of a meandering story, you wonder if there will ever come a time when you won’t be able to tolerate the charms of Slaters. But the thought passes and you drink again because tomorrow morning is an abstract concept.

When Eugene O’Neill wrote Long Day’s Journey Into Night, he wrote what he knew. The 1957 Pulitzer Prize winning play is the dramatization of his life, with characters, plotting and detail so analogous with what actually happened that O’Neill stipulated that it was only to be performed after his death. 60 years later, it’s a play that still packs an emotional punch, even if the production at The Geffen Playhouse gradually veers into languid repetition.

Eugene O’Neill

For those who appreciate art as a Freudian detective mystery, or, as a higher form of gossip where fictional characters and events correspond directly to real people and real events, the play is a revelatory exposition of Eugene O’Neill. For those who care not one jot about the play’s source material, Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a comprehensive study of a family in turmoil, beholden to the past, damned to resurrect old tragedies anew, over and over and over, as a single day progresses into night.

A parlour room occupies the stage at the Geffen Playhouse. It is furnished with the markers of the well-to-do: a chaise-lounge, a bookcase of immaculately kept Shakespeare. Stage left is a porch that opens out onto the ample New England lands belonging to the Tyrone family. At the back is a walkway to the staffed kitchens and a staircase to the Tyrone’s living quarters.

Despite the finery, there are foreboding portents. Fog besets the stage, wind rushes around the curtains. There are plenty of lamps in the parlour but they are rarely turned on, as is the want of miserly James Tyrone, master of the house. Played with authority by Alfred Molina, Tyrone is a grand old actor who made a financial killing investing in a play in which he starred a thousand times over. In this financial security, Tyrone happened upon creative death. However, his stagnant career is the least of his family’s worries.

From the first we are introduced to the shaky facade of familial normality, a see-through theatre played out by the Tyrones for each others’ benefit, and matched by the way the parlour room’s beams seep out of the stage ceiling and into the theatre as a vanishing fiction. James’ wife, Mary, played by Jane Kaczmarek, clings to the illusion of a normal family life with frenzied desperation. Ultimately, she is but the most extreme of the four Tyrones. The two sons, Jamie (Stephen Louis Grush) and Edmund (Colin Woodell), join their parents on the carousel of resentment, recycling regrets and pointing the finger at whichever family member strays into the crosshair of argumentation.

O’Neill portrays the past as inescapable, “Forget everything and face nothing.” The play imparts the irrefutable impression that the past lives of the characters have taken place—decades of accumulate hurt—and that the arguments surrounding the emotional damage have also taken place many times before. Their lives are reduced to the insults they cast on each other: Jamie is a good-for-nothing drunk, Edmund a reckless chancer. This is not the first whirl of the bitter carousel, though the grave atmosphere suggests it may well be the last.

The script has aged well with a few exceptions. O’Neill’s observations on character and relationships are evergreen and pointed, meditating on the Sisyphean and arguably contradictory tasks of changing oneself while accepting the reoccurring faults of others.

Nevertheless, over half-a-century after its first production the script now appears excessively conservative in one way, and overly explicit in another. An aversion to stating certain words such as suicide while constantly talking about the topic pervades the play—a propriety that applies to all four main characters without applying to their personalities, even considering the play’s setting in the first decades of the 20th century. This prurience goes against the men’s conduct, the sons’ ideologies, and the tendency of all four to talk and talk and talk.

Each character has an overwrought articulacy over their state of mind and an easy willingness to share their inner-demons. These two theatrical tics form an explicitness that dates the play. However skilfully O’Neill plants the exposition, by the end of the final act, one feels that there is not one skeleton left unexhumed. The piling on of story after story eventually wears down empathy and interest, like being passed endless photo albums by a stranger who’s manhandled you into his home. Sympathies extend only so far, and in this production sympathies don’t stretch the full four acts.

Life, luck and God are interchangeably cited by interchangeable Tyrones as the invisible source of their collective and individual woe. Whichever, the most threatening woe is the illness of Edmund, whose sickly pallor and obligatory coughing indicate something more serious than the “summer cold”— Mary’s oft-repeated and plainly delusional explanation. Edmund’s illness sparks the bonfire of Mary’s loose grip on reality.

As Mary descends into madness, so does the play. The quick wit and revelatory sniping of conversation is submerged by Kaczmarek’s raving portrayal of mental illness. It’s a caricature of what was ill-understood in the era of O’Neill, an over-pitched and one-tone state of mania hardly necessitated by O’Neill’s lines. In truth, Molina’s brash but subtle turn as James Tyrone stands apart from the rest of the cast, and not in a good way. His occasional bouts of despondent silence communicate so much so efficiently, while the rest of the Tyrones say a lot with little impact and to ever-decreasing returns.

An actor stronger than his cast is mirrored by a production weaker than its play. Directed by Jeanie Hackett, the performance simply fizzles out as the arguments run into each other indistinguishably. The pacing is off, and certain production values leave a lot to be desired, for example, the needless use of projected video, and an inaudible recording of O’Neill reciting a poem.

Still, the charms of the play are buried within, and there is a bitter irony to watching A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, enjoying it moderately, but contemplating how it was performed in yesteryear, and wondering how much better it all could have been this time around if only things turned out differently.

I walk into the cinema with finesse, style and gumption. Nothing’s going to stop me from watching a film I say to myself. Nothing. Unless something happens to me that means I can’t watch the film? Who knows…I guess I’ll find out. Oh, I almost forgot to mention I’m reviewing the film too.

Nearly two years have passed since the last 50 Shades came out but it feels like yesterday. Strange. Then again, I was in a coma for two years. How could I forget? Sustained brain damage.

I sink into my seat like the Titanic sank into the ocean. I’m dressed for the occasion wearing my brand new trench coat with easy-wash inner-lining bought especially for 50 Shades Darker. In one pocket of my coat I have an Austen and in the other I’ve got a Brontë. It doesn’t matter which novels in particular, or even which specific Brontë. If I reference their names then I must really love literature and anything I write will be literary, intelligent and clever.

The movie begins just like that. ‘Wow’ my subconscious tells me. I concur and agree. Cinema’s amazing. My stomach fills with liquid desire better known as Fanta Orange. I begin to jot down my most thoughtful thoughts in my Versace notebook, which is also sponsored by Apple:

Ana Steele (Dakota Johnson) is just your ordinary twenty-something woman trying to make her way in the world. She’s got a job at a publishing house, a cosy apartment in Seattle, but most of all, she’s got her independence. But here’s the twist: Ana Steele has got a terrible haircut. And despite that hair, Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), a business tycoon who dabbles in S&M sex stuff, wants to get back with her.

But Ana’s totally moved on from Grey. Or has she? At this early stage in the film it’s hard to say because when Grey sends her flowers Ana considers throwing them away but ultimately doesn’t. So suspenseful.

Ana’s a pretty shy person. Every fibre of her being whispers “I’m a mouse in human form,” though this isn’t a line in the film because fibres of beings keep pretty stum—just ask Nietzsche, who may have something to say on the subject.

Ana’s shyness is put to the test when she turns up at her friend’s gallery launch and sees photos of herself that she posed for when her friend who’s a photographer asked her to. You can see why she feels so aggrieved; there are six massive black and white photos of her and she’s smelling her clothes in at least four of them. This is speculative but it looks very much like a case of wishful smelling. We’ve all been there.

All the photos of Anna are purchased by a mystery buyer. I initially suspect the photographer’s Mum, but it turns out it was Christian Grey, flirting in a way that only a rich business man can: by aggressively purchasing your image and person against your will.

I never imagined that my review would be going so well but it is. Wait. Maybe I should mention the things that Dornan and Johnson have been in previously? Like the fact that Jamie Dornan was in hit TV show The Fall, and is actually a capable actor? Or the fact that Dakota Johnson was in A Bigger Splash, and is actually a capable actor? Let’s see:

Ana and Christian sit down in a restaurant to “renegotiate the terms” of their dormant relationship, a bureaucratic transaction that reminds me of the intergalactic trade deals in the sequel Star Wars movies, only without the frisson and pizzaz. Christian wants Ana to be subservient but Ana’s got her own ideas, as demonstrated by the fact she orders her own food all by herself even though Christian’s meal suggestion sounded much better. Independence comes at a price.

Scared of losing Ana forever, Christian reveals his deep, dark secret: he was abused as a child and his mother was a crack addict. Still, the viewer is left with many questions, like, what’s the back-story to Ana’s hair? Was she attacked by scissors?

Christian and Ana get back together but they take things slow and only have normal people sex without the help of spring-based contraptions. Unfortunately it’s very dull. When Ana tells Christian that she “needs a roadmap” you assume it’s because reading a map is more interesting than speaking to Christian.

This movie is really boring and my cock agrees and so does my subconscious and also my brain and one of my metatarsals, too. So far, 50 Shades Darker is totally lacking in spice, flavour and synonym.

Complications threaten their rekindled relationship. For instance, one of Christian’s old subservient flames, a girl who looks like she’s from the set of a Japanese horror movie, keeps rearing her pale and scary head. There’s also Ana’s boss, Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) who’s good looking in an evil way and is abusive towards women but without filling out the requisite paperwork beforehand like Christian does.

Still, they ignore these issues and try and build a relationship like any other normal couple: by sending each other passive-aggressive texts by day and attending masque balls by night. In one scene, Christian suggests Ana put a Newton’s Cradle inside herself like an overly ambitious pinball machine and Ana agrees. As the film goes on, we learn that relationships are all about give and take.

Oh God. What if it wasn’t a Newton’s Cradle? What if everyone’s doing this now and I’m the weird one for not knowing about it? I feel a Google search coming on.

Although 50 Shades Darker is a simultaneously messy and tedious film, it has its stronger moments. For instance, when Hyde attempts to sexually assault Ana, the scene has the all the tension of an episode of Mad Men. Unlike Mad Men, the drama resolves thanks to some previously undisclosed fighting skills. No more Mrs. Mousey!

Other highlights include the one funny zinger in the film—when Christian says “I know I’m complicated,”— the best line of Niall Leonard’s script. Bravo. And who knew popstar Rita Ora, couldn’t act? Now, lots of people.

Towards the never-arriving end, Ana and Christian check out The Red Room where he keeps his sex utensils. Christian sure puts the man in manacles; he’s not gay, he’s just very organised. All his whips and chains and buckles are meticulously catalogued. Good for him.

I breathe a breathy breath of air and walk out the cinema. To conclude my lengthy review on such an insignificant non-sensical point could be seen by many as kind of bad terrible and incompetent. Then again maybe it perfectly reflects the never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction the film makes you feel? Who knows? Me knows.

In 1961, putting a man on the moon was more conceivable than voting a black man into the White House. To defy gravity, a matter of science, to defy segregation, a crime.

Hidden Figures is a dramatic re-enactment that skilfully explores two historical movements side-by-side: the Space Race and the Civil Rights Movement. The first, the embodiment of an all-American enthusiasm for progress, the second, the struggle of African Americans to be treated as equal citizens. Directed by Theodore Melfi, Hidden Figures splices these phenomena together by dramatizing the real life achievements of three extraordinary NASA employees, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine G. Johnson, who, at the age of 98, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

“I don’t entertain the impossible,” says Jackson, played with verve by Janelle Monáe. Yet this movie is all about proving the impossible possible. Jackson fights to become the first black woman to be an aeronautical engineer while Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) chases indispensability as a permanent supervisor. The primary story follows Johnson, as she is assigned to The Space Task Group, a cohort of boffins responsible for safely sending an American into space before the Russians beat them to it.

Initially, Johnson is utilized as a human calculator, a safety net to prevent mathematical error. However, her savant skills ensure an upward trajectory despite the barriers associated with her gender and race. Taraji P. Henson’s performance as Johnson is one of restrained power, assured in the face of disparagement, ferocious when pushed by injustice.

Racism colours nearly every scene of Hidden Figures, yet its discomforting hue comes not from the white cloak of the Ku Klux Klan, but the starch white collar of the threatened co-worker. Dispiriting, anonymous gestures remind Johnson that she strays above her station. A ‘colored people’ coffee pot is installed on her arrival, lest she consider herself an equal member of the team. Johnson’s primary antagonist, head engineer Paul Stafford (Jim Norton), is a jealous, humourless man who obstructs Johnson at every turn. And yet the character is somehow more likeable than Norton’s recurring geek character, Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory. Possibly because, for all Stafford’s faults, he’s not so much of a know-it-all that he can afford to overlook Johnson’s talents.

Throughout this slice of the Sixties, discrimination is presented as natural fallacy; it is therefore it should be: that water fountain is assigned for white people, therefore black people should use their own. “I just follow the rules,” is a response Johnson, Jackson and Vaughan all hear in one guise or another, a putdown smuggled in a shrug and an empty smile. Such civil civil oppression is pervasive and hard to resist. Manners maketh a man blameless.

All three characters are distinguished by their consummate talents and irrepressible drive, without which, their fight against the status quo would have surely been scuttled. Seemingly benevolent Task Group boss Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) only asks Johnson’s name when he suspects she could be a spy, weeks after distinguishing herself as an excellent mathematician. The “good guys” care about Johnson so long as she’s a) a genius b) of use to the project.

Taraji P. Henson summing it on screen as Katherine G. Johnson

Thanks to the NASA setting, there’s a fair bit of math-science-space babble delivered by the cast with absolute conviction. Plus, there’s the dialogue aimed at any algebra averse laymen in the audience, which is apparently more understandable: “Look beyond the numbers, look around the numbers,” as if gravity-busting formulae is merely well camouflaged. Ever since A Beautiful Mind, the one way to spot an on-screen genius is by the flagrant misuse of surfaces in the name of mathematics. No window or tree is safe from the invasive etchings of a Hollywood prodigy. Fortunately, Johnson isn’t genius by numbers. She’s a protagonist near impossible not to root for.

When watching Hidden Figures, one rarely doubts the future successes of Johnson, Jackson and Vaughan; their triumphant arcs barely waver. Perhaps that’s the nature of a Hollywood biopic in this vein. The movie has been made with the intention of inspiring and informing, and on those counts it surely excels. But what of the black women living in this era without the talents of Johnson, Jackson, and Vaughan? Or, the black women so downtrodden by racism and sexism that their autonomy was shattered? These women are not hidden figures, because evidence of their achievements is not there to find. They were robbed of opportunity. This previously more common and depressing fate does not feature in Hidden Figures, and the film is weaker for it. As a celebratory film, it lacks the drama that the threat of failure brings, a threat which surely existed for all three women during the ’60s despite their talents.

History is set. By virtue of it happening one way and not another, it gives the impression of inevitability. Former President Obama has repeated a quote belonging to Martin Luther King Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” This illusion—that history takes the side of the righteous— engenders complacency: the future is up for grabs and must be fought for. As a model to aspire to, Hidden Figures is ideal. As a sign of the fight to come in the Trump era and its uncertain outcome, Hidden Figures obscures the dangers of possible defeat.